I was going to write an essay on the subject of third-party voting, but I don’t have too much time or patience to waste on debunking fallacies and obfuscations propagated by liars and imbeciles. But in the spirit of Martin Luther and Karl Marx, here are a few theses on the topic:

It’s perverse, to say the least, that opponents of third-party votes castigate third-party candidates and voters for “spoiling” elections, when third-party voters are doing exactly what voting and elections are ostensibly designed for. If anyone “spoils” our democracy, it’s perpetual, reflexive apologists for powerful mainstream politicians.

“Realpolitik” is not German for “constantly grabbing your ankles.”

Speaking of Germany, many Americans are unaware that the political system of East Germany comprised multiple parties. The votes in the Volkskammer, however, were consistently unanimous, with one notable exception: the vote on liberalizingabortion laws. Should East German dissidents have worked within the system so as to have a voice on an important issue like abortion? Our two major parties certainly differ on more than one issue, but for every area of disagreement, there are at least several where they agree, usually to the detriment of the majority of Americans and human beings. (One has only to watch the third Obama-Romney joint appearance* to appreciate this fact.)

It’s downright Orwellian to claim, as some Obama supporters do, that whites (or, for added effect, white males) who oppose Obama due at least in part to his complicity in the operation of a prison state that disproportionately affects minorities, his embrace of “war on terror” civil liberties violations that disproportionately affect nonwhite Muslims, his administration’s coziness with bankers who targeted minorities with predatory loans, and his brutal drone war on civilians in the Third World, are racist for doing so (note the truly racist/sexist refusal to acknowledge that there are minorities and women who hold the same views — their very existence is inconvenient to the lazy hacks who rely on this kind of cheap partisan smear). Anyway, that claim is too inane and devoid of logic even to require refutation, but it’s worth highlighting just as a reminder of how elections in the US are used to control opinion and limit debate — the very opposite of their intended and advertised purpose.

Obama’s “kill list” and claimed assassination power are pretty much the most radical violation of the Constitution a president could engage in; what else would he have to do to lose your vote? Start drone-bombing US citizens inside the United States? Own slaves? Open a concentration camp on US soil? There’s at least one individual out there who has actually argued that if Obama promised to build fewer concentration camps than Romney, it would be “morally repugnant” to vote for a third party. That is, the people who voted for no concentration camps would be responsible for the additional concentration camps constructed if the more-camps candidate won. How much more twisted can you get? Is our society this morally degraded? FUCK.

The worst aspect of our society’s observance of Christmas is the way adults deceive children into believing there’s a magical bearded man who will grant their wishes if they’re good.

But enough about Jesus.

Santa Claus, on the other hand, is a truly heroic figure, running, as he does, a pagan mole operation inside the Christian mythos.

It’s widely presumed that the septentrional god of creation, poetry, wisdom, magic, and song, known to the Germanic peoples as Odin, Wotan, or Woden, and to the Finns and their relatives as Väinämöinen, made himself scarce after the introduction of Christianity, leaving the masses to their blissful idiocy. (In the Kalevala, Väinämöinen suggests that the baby Jesus be dumped in a swamp and hit over the head with a stick. If only.)

But it’s become apparent that the great shamanic culture-hero and master of disguise is alive and well in Korvatunturi, surrounded by those other survivors from ancient times, the elves, subverting the Christian ethos from within by adulterating it with the pagan virtues of pleasure, frivolity, and self-indulgence.

But surely Santa is just a symbol of the gross commercialization of the ancient festival? Contrariwise: it’s all too easy to underestimate Jólnir‘s boundless cunning. He’s really playing eleven-dimensional chess here, having recognized the revolutionary role of bourgeois materialism in eradicating feudalistic superstition and paving the way for proletarian class consciousness. Why do you think he wears red?

So anyway, I forget exactly where I was going with this, but I wanted to post the lyrics of a Yuletide song I wrote regarding, I don’t know, inverted totalitarianism or something. (JUST WHAT YOU WANTED THIS HOLIDAY SEASON: MORE INSUFFERABLE, JEJUNE POLITICAL RANTING FROM POETARIAT.) I recorded five or six shitty versions of it a year ago and was going to have another go at it, but I decided my time was better spent programming some shit instead. You don’t care.Read the rest of this entry »

A preoccupation with one’s own feelings of victimhood, triumph, and exceptionalism, to the detriment of serious contemplation of the ways in which one victimizesothers, is a sign of narcissism and psychopathy in nations as well as in individuals.

Was it really worth it to give Osama bin Laden the fate he wanted all along? In the near future, I’m sure we’ll see a lot of demonization of the antiwar movement — after all, they would have let Osama get away. Because everyone who was killed or maimed by US troopsandcontractors (and by our allies), everyone who was tortured (some of them tortured to death), and everyone who was raped (or gang-raped and murdered) is insignificant compared to one fanatic in a compound in Pakistan. (I won’t even begin to detail the vast opportunity costs of our immense military budget.)

The American propaganda system requires that we see bin Laden as merely a cartoon villain, instead of a family man who loved poetry, volleyball, and horses. Yet it simultaneously requires us to humanize the men and women who plan and carry out American war crimes: we know all about Obama’s struggle to quit smoking, his practical jokes, his lightsaber skills, his Portuguese water dog, and so forth, and many of us have read at least some of that totally masturbatory memoir he wrote. Are some human lives more valuable than others? Are some of the bloodthirsty psychopaths who engage in the wanton destruction of innocent human lives more human than others?

The propaganda system also requires that we glorify the obedient Navy SEALs and CIA agents who killed bin Laden. But there is nothing heroic in America’s murderous foreign policy. The real heroes are still people like Julian Assange and Bradley Manning who have revealed some of the truth about our actions and motivations (and why it took us so long to find bin Laden).

As the bankrupt liberal elite and their blog-O-spheric toadies beseech you to vote for Democrats lest we fall victim to an even more warmongering and corporate-feudal neofascist regime, remember this mantra: This is a pile of shit, while Bradley Manning rots in prison.